Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Readings – Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17; Psalm 127; Hebrews 9:24-28; Mark 12:38-44
The God we know through Jesus Christ is a strange God. Let me explain.
Ruth was a Moabite, a descendant of Lot. She was a foreigner as described by Judaism (Genesis 19).
Boaz was a descendant of Abraham and Sarah, but a descendant of Tamar who tricked Judah, one of the twelve sons of Jacob, into fatherhood following the deaths of her successive husbands (Genesis 38). Boaz was also descended from Rahab, the prostitute of Jericho, who sheltered the spies of Hebrews before their conquest of the Promised Land (Joshua 2). Indeed, the union of Ruth and Boaz was a bit cloudy. In search of security, Noami in today’s reading guided Ruth to Boaz after dark. Ruth first bathed, anointed herself, put on her finest attire, and waited until after Boaz had dined and wined after a hard day of work in the barley fields. When Boaz is ready for sleep, Ruth cuddles up to him, and “uncover[ed] his feet”. Then Ruth, coached by Naomi, did what Boaz told her to do. This is the PG version. Noami advised Ruth into the seduction of Boaz.
When they came together, the Lord made her conceive, and she bore him a son…They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of [future King] David.
However, this passage is not centrally about Noami, nor about Ruth, nor about Boaz. This is a story of God’s faithfulness, of God’s willingness to create a future through outsiders—Moabites, through deceptiveness—Tamar, through flawed people—Rahab. The heroes are not Tamar, or Rahab, or even King David. The hero is our God, striving to love us, striving to guide us, despite the characters of history.
These characters are most unlike the woman at the temple in Jerusalem who gave out of her poverty, put in everything she had, all she had to live on.
We, gathered here today, are more Ruth, more like Noami, more like Tamar, more like Rahab, more like Boaz than the unnamed woman at the temple in Jerusalem.
We are flawed, no doubt about it! Yet God seeks us out; God seeks to guide us; indeed, God seeks to love us, which is sometimes hard to comprehend. In fact, the entire Bible is the love story of God for us, much more than it is our own story of loving God.
Tomorrow, we celebrate our veterans, women and men who all gave some and some who gave all. We honor them and declare that God loved them, and that God loves them still, forever, eternally. And we also, in hindsight, can state that God loved those who opposed them in Europe, in Japan, in Korea, in Vietnam. God also loves them forever, eternally.
I know that it is sometimes difficult to acknowledge it, but our faith tells us it is true. Our God is so much more loving than we can ever comprehend, and that is why God is God beyond our fully knowing.
You may wonder why whenever I say the name of Jesus while reading the Gospel, I bow my head. I am acknowledging that God is God, and that I am not.
You may wonder why I bow my heard upon entering and exiting the sanctuary. I am acknowledging that God is God, and that I am not.
The God who loves Naomi, who loves Ruth, who loves Tamar, who loves Rahab, who loves Boaz, loves us, even while knowing us more fully than we know ourselves.
Jesus loves us, this I know, for the Bible tells us so.
Amen
